One of the issues we must consider is whether the vehicle carrying the message is appropriate. Can drama teach truth effectively to people daily conditioned that the purpose of drama is merely to entertain?
For example, it is entirely appropriate in teaching small children the rudiments of language and social interaction to dress a man in the guise of a large purple dinosaur and start him singing. Boosting sales of orangey soft drinks by painting a man orange and getting him to slap passers-by with rubber gloves may be humorous and memorable – sales rise, adverts increase in popularity and everybody is happy. The method of communication doesn’t jar with the intended aim.
Now imagine President Bush or Tony Blair announcing an imminent nuclear strike. Alternatively, imagine yourself at the bedside of a seriously injured child. Would a cuddly costume be appropriate to impart grave warnings or devastating news? If you were driving unawares toward the scene of a motorway pile-up in dense fog and you were encountered by Big Bird or Coco the Clown, would his roadside antics persuade you to stop or to smile? Would you take him seriously? Would you take his message seriously?
Such a presentation of life and death issues demand that triviality be excluded. We are speaking of the eternal destiny of the souls of men. We are speaking of the sacrificing of the only-begotten of God for wicked sinners: an actual, horrific, shameful dying – not theatre, but reality. Art Azurdia is right when he says:
“The cross, implies Paul, not only determines the substance of the preacher’s message, it dictates the manner in which it is communicated”
Art Azurdia, Spirit Empowered Preaching (Mentor) p91
The medium of drama and theatre is linked inextricably in the minds of most with the concept of entertainment. Cinema goers and recreational TV watchers do not watch in order to be challenged about their deepest convictions, impacted by a message deliberately designed to engender a radical and permanent change of lifestyle, or encountered by a God of awesome holiness and perfect demands. People not only do not expect that, they openly resent it. They don’t wish to be offended and exposed as sinners – which is exactly what the cross and law of God do. There is an unspoken understanding that this is entertainment – sometimes tearful, other times frightening, and other times disturbing – but entertainment nevertheless.
Even when deeply and profoundly serious matters are presented, they are followed very swiftly by jolly jingles, light-hearted comedy, or ‘unreal’ onscreen violence which does no lasting damage and allows the hero to impressively return to die a thousand such deaths. The lines between fiction and fact, and between entertainment and genuinely sober matters are blurred and muddied.
We become so desensitised to what the silver screen shows us, that we can see famine victims as ‘compassion bytes’ between programmes, hear breaking news of death and disaster, and still have the coffee made before the next slice of our programme recommences – all of this to the crunch of popcorn or the backdrop of moving classical music or subtle MTV backbeats.
Television and cinema pour out a torrent of images and scene changes – the average scene length being 3.5 seconds – time to think and evaluate, seriously ponder and act is discouraged by the very medium transmitting the message.
Quoting Neil Postman:
“No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure… Everything about a news show tells us this – the good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter, the exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage, the attractive commercials – all these and more suggest that what we have seen is no cause for weeping. A news show, to put it plainly, is a format for entertainment, not education, reflection or catharsis”.
There is no natural disaster so devastating, no massacre so brutal, and no humanitarian catastrophe so awful that we cannot be distracted and woken from our morbidity or considerations of personal mortality by the swift scene change into the fictional tragedies of soap storylines or quick fire alternative comedians that follow on their heels.
The introduction of televised courtrooms at trials such as O.J Simpson and Louise Woodward turn matters of life and death, and justice and harrowing sorrow into little more than episodes of Prime Suspect or Cracker, or the closing drama of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Viewers surf from one to the other with ease, further lowering our ability to emotionally discern differences between fact and fiction.
Add to all of that the deliberate historical revisionism of Hollywood, where facts are liberally altered in historical dramas in order to enhance storyline and viewer appeal – deliberate factual alterations in Titanic and The Enigma Machine are but a drop in this particular ocean. The result? We are frequently left with not only dramatically packaged entertainment designed to keep the viewer coming at all costs, but with an utter inability to trust the factual content of what we see. The cinema goer understands that. He or she understands that truth and issues of real importance die daily on the altar of entertainment, and he doesn’t care.
Reality TV even uses actual tragedy and danger to entertain – “When Pets Go Bad”, “Police Chase 6”, etc. Even the concept of Comic Relief and Children in Need take us almost second by second from poverty and trauma to belly laughs and broad smiles. An evening of humanitarian close-ups would be a ratings disaster without red-nosed celebrities sitting in baths of beans. The media of television and cinema have as their primary function, entertainment – and subconsciously, we know it.
We make a fundamental mistake if we believe otherwise.
Perhaps one of our greatest concerns about The Passion of the Christ should be that by the very act of cinematising his atonement he truly does become The Last Action Hero - the supreme triviality.